Use preg_replace to replace the contents of a tag

Posted on Feb 1, 2011 in Coding | No Comments

I often need to replace the contents of a tag using php with another variable. This is made easy with the preg_replace() function and a nifty regular expression.

$content = '<div>Some content to replace</div>';
echo $content;
//output: <div> Some content to replace</div>

//replace content using preg_replace and regex:
$content = preg_replace('/<div[^>]*>.*?<\/div>/i', '<div>New Content</>', $content);

echo $content;

// new output: 
// <div>New Content</div>

$content = '<div>Some content to replace</div>';

echo $content;

//output: <div> Some content to replace</div>

//replace content using preg_replace and regex:

$content = preg_replace('/<div[^>]*>.*?<\/div>/i', '<div>New Content</>', $content);

echo $content;

// new output:

// <div>New Content</div>

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7139342/preg-replace-how-to-remove-contents-inside-a-tag